Bus stop

The timid school girl waits anxiously for the bus to arrive, dreading the moment of having to say goodbye to Dad or Mum and get on the bus packed with noisy kids who would almost always jeer or make fun of her.

Every day it was something different – the colour of her jumper, the shoes she wore, the size of her school bag, how her hair was parted – so she could never know what she could have done that day to try and avoid criticism.

Somehow she made it through the day at school and as usual got top marks for her reading and spelling; but of course this also drew attention to her and gave her enemies more fodder for tomorrow’s teasing.

And then it was time to go home on the bus, another harrowing experience to be endured.

If she had had a successful day at school there would certainly be comments made about how ‘brainy’ she was, how she must read encyclopaedias for bedtime reading, how she was just being too smart to show everyone else up.

Again, she endured the bus trip to her stop and then the next hurdle.

Would someone be waiting to meet the bus or would they be running late?

If there was no one there to meet her she knew the ritual – get off the bus, and walk down the dusty road to the first house where Mr & Mrs Byrnes lived.

They were old people about her grandmother’s age who had never had children but loved everybody else’s as their own.

Once she got to the house it was fun waiting for Mum or Dad to pick her up but it seemed a long walk, alone in the heat anxiously scouring the roadside for suspicious creatures and jumping at every rustle in the grass.

22.11.13